Ariana Grande on Her Mental Health After the Manchester Attack

Ariana Grande initially kept her struggles with PTSD after the Manchester bombing a secret, but now, she's showing she has nothing left to hide when it comes to her mental health. In a new interview accompanying her August 2018 cover story for Elle, which dropped on Wednesday, Ari opened up about some of the mental health struggles she experienced in the wake of the terrorist attack during her May 2017 concert in Manchester, England.

"When I got home from tour, I had really wild dizzy spells, this feeling like I couldn't breathe,” she told Elle. "I would be in a good mood, fine and happy, and they would hit me out of nowhere. I've always had anxiety, but it had never been physical before. There were a couple of months straight where I felt so upside down." Ariana also made sure to clarify in the interview that while it's completely understandable for her mental health to have been impacted by the attack, she doesn't want her experiences to overshadow those of concertgoers who were physically injured or killed by the bombing.

Ariana noted that the final track on her upcoming album, titled "Get Well Soon," was influenced by her post-Manchester mental health and is basically "all the voices in my head talking to one another." The lyrics, which she sampled for Elle, reportedly include, "They say my system is overloaded / Girl, what's wrong with you? Come back down."

In a tweet earlier this year, Ariana described her post-Manchester panic attacks in a similar way, and again cited them as the inspiration for "Get Well Soon." "Felt like i was floating for like 3 months last year & not in a nice way. like i outside my body?" she wrote at the time. "Was v scary and i couldn't breathe well. so it's ab that. & lots of voices in my head singin."

Though Manchester had an understandably enormous impact on Ariana's mental health, it isn't the first time she's struggled with anxiety. The "No Tears Left to Cry" singer has been in therapy for more than a decade, and started seeing a mental health professional shortly after her parents divorced. "It's work," she told Elle of the ongoing process, which she's called "the best" in past interviews. “I'm a 25-year-old woman. But I've also spent the past handful of years growing up under very extraordinary circumstances. And I know how that story goes,” she told Elle.